Tshirt bag

So what do you do with old tshirts?  The ones that don't fit, the ones you don't wear, the sentimental ones or the ones that you find at a yard sale but won't for whatever reason wear but you have to have......

That's where the story begins.  My mom loves the Beatles.  I saw this tshirt....but I knew she wouldn't actually wear it.  So I decided I'd make it into something.  After sifting through pinterest, I didn't see anything that I absolutely loved, so I decided to just wing it and try something. 

I decided to make a small, flat, square bag-about the size of a record.  She could put just about anything in there to carry it around. 

The shirt was brown with orange print, so I went to sal val and bought a plain orange tshirt for 50 cents to make a lining in the bag.  I then layed out the Beatles tshirt and cut a 12 inch square (both layers at once) around the logo on the front.  I couldn't make it bigger as the shirt was on the small side.  I had planned on making the strap out of the leftover but didn't have enough, so I had to make the straps out of the orange shirt.  I then layed out the orange shirt and did the same, cut a 12 inch square (two layers).  I then cut two 3 inch strips off the bottom of the shirt (the entire circumfrence of the shirt) and folded them in half for the straps.

Now it was time to sew.  I'm usually pretty fussy with things but this project really had a hippie, bohemian feel to it.  I thought, no need to have crisp lines and hidden seems.  Nope, I decided to use a zigzag stitch and just sew down the sides and the let the seems naturally curl and fray on the outer edges like cotton tshirts do.  It's not like the bag is going to be washed a lot, it's a bag. 

So...  I took the three inch strips I was going to use for the handles and zig zag stitched down both sides near the edge to hold the two layers together. I left about a half inch seam on the outside (I used brown thread on the orange fabric....made it more quirky)  I then took the front of the bag and one of the orange inner panels and sewed them together while inserting the strap on the top edge. This secured the straps in between the front panel and inner liner.  I did this for the back panel as well.  I then sandwiched the front and back together and sewed all four layers (three sides) on the outside with a zig zag stitch around the outside.

Easy peasy....under an hour and you have this cute bag!

Some tips-you need a cutting board and rotary cutter.  tshirts are too stretchy to try to cut by hand and have everything line up.  Also, don't "pull" your fabric through your machine-it'll be all stretched out and misshapen when you're done!